A. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to a system for managing telecommunications network systems. In particular, one embodiment of the invention relates to a system for provisioning elements in a Fiber-to the curb telecommunications system.
B. Background Art
Fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) telecommunications systems provide both traditional telecommunications services such as Plain Old Telephony service (POTs) as well as advanced Switched Digital Services (SDS) such as video and high speed data access. Because of the range of services which can be supported, it is likely that FTTC systems will be widely deployed by telephone companies as they install new lines and upgrade their networks.
Telephone companies which can use FTTC telecommunications systems typically provide services to hundreds of thousands and even millions of subscribers. The telecommunications network has traditionally required manual intervention to provision services and equipment; this manual intervention is usually in the form of a craftsperson who will re-wire and configure equipment as necessary to provide new services to subscribers requesting those services, or to restore services after failure of a network element.
Even where manual intervention is not necessary, the existing computerized systems for managing telecommunications system are comprised of a number of Operation and Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS) which allow the telephone company to turn service on to new subscribers, process alarms from faulty equipment in a semi-automatic manner, and in general to operate their network. In the present telecommunications network there are many types of OSS and BSS, and there are at present no systems which provide the ability to provision equipment and services for voice, video and data. Another drawback of the existing OSS is that they are not scaleable and therefore cannot be run on a workstation or PC to control a few thousand homes, but are run on a mainframe computer and will typically control tens of thousands of subscribers. Another drawback of the existing OSS is that for those elements that can be provisioned, the OSS provisioning is not intuitive or simple. Often a customer services representative will have to use cryptic commands to provision some element.
A further drawback of existing systems is that they do not offer flow-through provisioning for all of the services which are now available in FTTC platforms. Flow-through provisioning occurs when a customer service representative processes a customer request or complaint, and all of the subsequent steps in equipment and service provisioning are automatically executed. Some flow-through provisioning exists for telephony services, but the OSS does not begin to address the wide range of voice, video and data services which will be available in the FTTC platform.
FTTC systems offer such a wide range of services, and present an overwhelming set of choices to the craftsperson. For this reason there exists the need for a method and apparatus for element management in FTTC systems.